Top 10 Things at MotoGP Werks!

Chris Redpath’s Little Shop of Roarers

2. Katana Superbike

Maybe you’ve seen this one before, in the Fast Dates calendar or possibly at the Grand National Roadster show in 2011, where it won Best Sportbike. Redpath is a Katana freak, and this one’s his baby. It started out as an 1981 Katana, before its original engine was shelved in favor of an ’86 GSX-R750 LE dry-clutch Yoshimura Superbike motor, complete with FCR flatslides, an 836cc kit and Carrillo rods. Its Motec brain, traction control and data logger came from a YZR500; its Harris triple clamps clamp a WP fork, the exhaust is handbuilt, of course. It’s really kind of a brutish thing when you look close long enough, slightly cobbled together but expertly so. Maybe it’s just the paint, the classic Wes Cooley colors that bridge the gap from the earliest glory days to what was then the future, which is now the rapidly receding past. I’ll shut up now.

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